


FNAF SWAP: Origins of the Marionette

by LozFanXV



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Gen, Henry is the Villain, Innocent!William, Role Reversal, fnaf swap, fnaf swap au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 09:55:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25468909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LozFanXV/pseuds/LozFanXV
Summary: A story we know and love, but with our favorite characters in different roles. One thing's the same, a man commits an unforgivable sin, and another loses his child to a violent crime.(This fic has now been discontinued from my AU. I'll keep it up, so you guys can at least see where my AU idea started at the very least.)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 29





	FNAF SWAP: Origins of the Marionette

Henry throws his wrench on the worktable, his frustrations reaching a near breaking point. His newest creation is powered down on the table, the thrown wrench jostling it for only a second.

The creation, or what he calls the Marionette, can almost be confused for a human. Of course, most people would be put off by the purple skin tone and face paint, but Henry hopes that the Marionette’s kind and calm persona that he installs would squash people’s unease of it. Michael and Charlie think it’s good, and even William has already talked about bringing it into the diner.

But it’s not perfect. His creation is still missing something to make it truly human. It infuriates him to no end. It’s like the solution is right there but he cannot obtain it. He stalks out of the room, not wanting to even spare his failure another glance.

His home is empty once he comes up from the basement, and it takes him a few seconds to remember that Charlie went over to the Afton’s house down the street after finishing her homework. She has been spending less and less time at home after Sammy’s “mysterious accident” with one of William’s inventions in the basement. Not that he can blame her.

He checks the time, six in the evening, at this time they should be done making dinner. He sighs and goes to grab his boots beside the front door. Hopefully, they won’t mind one more mouth to feed.

——————————-

The rain comes down hard onto his car as Henry drives through the town. It’s a Saturday so of course, Charlie wanted to go back to the Aftons to play with Elizabeth. After driving her to the house due to the rain, he didn’t feel like driving back home. 

The talk with William last night is still running through his head. Remnant, the idea they discovered in college. The thing that gives humans life, almost like a soul. He feels like crying, the one thing to make his creations perfect and he cannot obtain it.

The rain starts to come down harder, and Henry curses. It’s already almost pitch black outside thanks to the storm, and it’s only three in the afternoon. It’s when he drives past Fredbear Diner that he spots a peculiar sight from the lights given by the windows. 

Standing outside in the alleyway is a boy wearing a purple shirt and a green bracelet. Michael Afton, William’s eldest son. Henry’s not sure how long he’s been in the pouring rain, but he’s already soaked. He’s pounding on the window of the diner, and Henry cannot tell if it’s tears or rain pouring down his face.

He pulls into the parking lot and just watches Michael. The boy screams out for someone to open the door and let him in. Probably a cruel prank then. That’s when the thought enters his head.

“You cannot create remnant, so why not take it?” It says.

And the thing is, he considers it. Most people would immediately drive away, or at the very least throw that thought away. But Henry, he’s desperate for his dream of a perfect creation, so he decides to entertain it.

Mike has the kind of personality that he wants the Marionette to have. He’s smart, bright, and thanks to the discipline from William he can be polite when he needs to be. Besides, William has two other children, so surely he wouldn’t mind losing one?

His mind made up, Henry leaves his car. Careful to not alert the boy, who’s now huddled under the window, his knees pulled to his chest as he sobs in his arms. Henry knows he doesn’t have much time before someone comes along so he snatches the boy’s arm and pulls Mike up to his feet before starting to drag him to his car.

It takes Mike a few seconds to process what is happening, but once he does he tries to pull out of the grip around his arm, even trying to use his other hand to pry out. All it does is cause Henry to grasp tighter.

They reach the car, and Henry flings open the passenger door before throwing Michael on the seat. He frantically looks around the interior, a look of recognition crosses his features. He’s been in his car before of course. Michael finally gets a good look at Henry’s face.

“Uncle Henry…?” He says, the confusion clear in his voice. Henry just closes the door before getting into the driver’s seat.

“Put on your seatbelt.”

Mike listens…

——————————-

Henry stares down at the dying boy. The blood pools from under him as the stab wound on his chest continues to gush the liquid all over the purple shirt, turning it into a sick sort of tie-dye. Michael’s eyes stare up at the ceiling in shock as blood continues to pool in his mouth, choking him. 

It was easy to convince Mike to come to his basement, with the promise of wanting to cheer the boy up by showing him the Marionette and then needing his help with his animatronic. Michael, who loves to watch and help his father with his work on the animatronics, was a little excited if still a little nervous. So with one hand on his back, Henry led the young boy down the steps to the basement. 

The thing about his basement is just how cut off from the rest of the world it can feel. There’s no other entrance to get into the basement and couple that with no windows and only one light source and it can create quite a chilling atmosphere. So chilling that Elizabeth and Chris refuse to step foot in the basement, and even Charlie refuses to come down without Henry.

Michael’s choking and gasping is the only sound in the basement. Well, that and the Marionette’s mechanical clicking and whirring. He turned the animatronic on to keep Michael distracted, and it worked. The poor boy didn’t see the knife coming.

Maybe that’s why when the phone rings in the kitchen, Henry jumps. He only spares the other two occupants of the room a glance before rushing up the stairs to answer the phone.

(If he stayed for a bit longer, Henry would’ve noticed the way the Marionette’s gaze turned to Michael, a look of distress and pity on its face.)

Henry’s not surprised to find the call to be from a frantic William, who went to go pick his son up from their diner, only to find his eldest gone.

“Will you help me look for him?” He says. Henry agrees, grabbing his coat from the rack beside the front door and hopping into his car to head down to the Afton house.

——————————-

The Marionette gets down from the table, it’s eyes never leaving the child. Marionette was programmed with code to help calm distressed children from injuries like cuts and bruises. But even with its limited knowledge of human injuries, it could tell that this was no simple cut.

This child, a small boy of an apparent ten years of age, is too injured for a few soothing words to fix. He needs a doctor, but there’s no employees or the owners for the animatronic to get. So the Marionette can only do one thing it’s programmed to do, it’ll comfort the boy.

It walks up to the child, stepping into the puddle of blood. The boy is no longer making any noise, yet it can tell from the small twitches that he’s still alive. It reaches down to him and slowly pulls him into its arms. Mindful of the painful groans and whimpers coming from him.

It holds the child closely, combing his hair and whispering soothing words that his code can give. It feels the boy slacken in its embrace, the painful whimpers are no longer being uttered. A small smile graces the Marionette’s face. It’s a relief to have calmed the child down enough to have him sleeping.

The Marionette was not programmed with the knowledge of death.

——————————-

After searching around for Michael, Officer Clay was contacted. A search team was sent to check the areas around Fredbear Diner, and even the woods behind the diner. Five o’clock arrives and William’s son is still not found.

By the time Henry gets back to his home, William was barely just holding it together. Henry could understand, he felt the same way with Sammy and Mary’s deaths.

He walks down to the basement but pauses on the steps. There’s a large blood puddle on the floor where Michael’s body is supposed to be, but his body isn’t there. Not only that, but bloody shoe prints are leading away from the puddle.

Henry makes it the rest of the down to find a peculiar but welcome sight. There sits his animatronic, his creation, holding Michael’s dead body in its arms. The Marionette is turned off, hopefully from taking Michael’s remnant and not from overheating.

It took a few times to tug the body from the Marionette’s grasp, even powered off the creation is strong. He curses when he spots some blood staining the animatronic’s outfit. That’s going to be a pain to remove. 

But that’s a task for later. Right now, he needs to figure out where to hide Michael’s body. Henry considers burying his body. But if the police find it they’ll trace the crime back to him. A glance around the basement gives him an idea, the freezer. He can just hide the body until the whole search calms down.

Wrapping Michael’s body up in a blue tarp, He dumps the body in the freezer, the crunch of the body against the frost at the inner walls. He stares down at the body, feeling a twinge of regret for the boy he not so long ago considered a nephew. 

He closes the freezer.

——————————-

It took a month for Henry to finally get rid of Michael’s body. William has been wringing himself ragged trying to find his son, and the kids have been more subdued in their energy. Charlie goes over to the Afton house every day, to try and cheer up her friends. 

The police were the worst though. They hung around almost every corner and shadow, making it impossible for Henry to just dump the body in some dumpster and go. 

He understands why they are working so hard, Michael might be the first case of a kidnapped child from Hurricane that turns out to be serious and not just a kid wandering off. Coupled that with the fact that Officer Clay is a close family friend to the Emilys and Aftons, so he’s probably taking this as badly as William is. Henry understands it, that doesn’t mean he has to like it.

And if that wasn’t enough, turns out he killed Michael for nothing. Michael didn’t possess the Marionette. Henry cleaned the blood off the animatronic and gave a week of waiting for any sign of improvement before setting the attraction open in the diner. 

Much to Henry’s disappointment not only did the Marionette not improve in acting human, it got worse. Now, it would glitch and stutter through the coded phrases at random intervals. And according to some of the patrons, they would hear the animatronic say a strange phrase that Henry knows he didn’t program into the Marionette.

**“Save Him.”**

_(You can’t.)_

——————————-

The windshield wipers scrape against the window at the fastest setting Henry’s car has. It’s nine at night, and the cops have finally calmed down enough that Henry feels it’s safe enough to get rid of Michael’s body.

Thinking about the said body, his eyes travel to the rearview mirror, to the thing lying across the backseat. It was a pain digging Michael out of the freezer, the tarp refused to separate from the freezer’s insides, the frost clung to the tarp like weld bond adhesive, Henry gave up and just grabbed Michael and left.

Michael’s body shakes with the car, and once again Henry wishes he fought the tarp just so he doesn’t have to see the body every time he checks behind him. At least Michael’s head is turned towards the backseat, Henry’s not sure he could drive with the feeling of the cold dead gaze on him.

Right now, he’s driving to the diner. The alleyway has the dumpster that he needs to hide the body. Hopefully, the dumpster isn’t too full, or else he has no other thing to do but dig through the trash, and the last thing Henry wants to do is dig through trash in a severe rainstorm.

He drives into the alleyway, careful to keep his car lights low. It didn’t take him long to park the car and drag Michael out from the backseats. Now with the body in his arms, he makes his way to the dumpster, only to have his hopes dashed.

Not only is the dumpster full, but it’s also absolutely overflowing! With trash bags even in a pile around the dumpster. There’s no way Henry can hide his body in there. By the time he digs out a spot for Michael’s body, he will almost certainly get caught.

But Henry can’t go back to his home with the body! Sooner or later, the body would be found if he keeps it at home. And Henry’s not sure what he’s most afraid of if that happens, the police or William.

A light comes on inside the diner, and Henry, panicking, dumps Michael next to the brick wall that makes up the diner. He hurries to his car and speeds out of the alleyway.

An employee named Caleb is the one who discovers the young boy’s body. When questioned by the police if he saw who dumped the poor child’s body in the alleyway, all he could say was he saw a red car speeding off out of the alleyway, he was more concerned about the corpse he found. Caleb would quit his job three days later, citing trauma.

A father is contacted that night to receive the terrible news that he suspected, but hoped to not have.

——————————-

William stares down at the freshly dug grave, the setting sun painting it a warm glow. It’s been a few days since the funeral, and he finds himself in a worse daze than when Michael went missing. At least when his son was missing there was still hope that he would be found alive.

But no, that was never going to happen. He overheard the cops gossiping, he knows how whoever killed his son kept his body in a freezer. He clenches his shaking hands as he’s reminded of it, how some bastard out there was probably looking him in the face and giving him some false sympathies like a snake in the grass.

William eyes the tombstone in front of him once more. 

_Michael James Afton_

His eyes travel to the tombstone next to his son, his wife’s name on it. He finds himself thankful that he was able to at the very least bury them together. 

He brushes his fingers over his wife’s grave, tracing her name. It takes William a couple of seconds to realize that he’s fallen to his knees in the dirt, but at the moment he doesn’t care.

A feeling started to blossom inside his chest, replacing the cold emptiness that was there before. It gnaws at him, intensifying the anger that already resided in him. William grabs fistfuls of his jeans, scrunching them up and grits his teeth as he identifies the emotion spilling over into his heart.

Intense revenge.

He gets back up onto his feet, ignoring the dirt on his jeans. He spares Michael’s grave one more glance before starting the trek back to his car. He has a lot of planning to do. 

Making sure his son’s murderer gets dragged off to hell will be time-consuming.

**Author's Note:**

> Gotta give a huge shout out to two amazing artists over on tumblr for giving me such an amazing au for FNAF. And that would be [Jaes](https://jaes-fnaftrash.tumblr.com/aus/swap) and [Scatter](https://official-michael-afton.tumblr.com/tagged/swap-au)! These two are amazing and deserve way more love and appreciation. 
> 
> And if you guys wanna also give me some love on my own Tumblr blog, I'm [over here](https://rglozwriter.tumblr.com/).
> 
> And thank you all so much for reading this! I might do some more for this au, so stay tuned!


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